CHAPTER XLIII

[Georgiana Ford to Wilfrid:]

“I have omitted replying to your first letter, not because of the nature of its contents:  nor do I write now in answer to your second because of the permission you give me to lay it before my brother.  I cannot think that concealment is good, save for very base persons; and since you take the initiative in writing very openly, I will do so likewise.

“It is true that Emilia is with me.  Her voice is lost, and she has fallen as low in spirit as one can fall and still give us hope of her recovery.  But that hope I have, and I am confident that you will not destroy it.  In the summer she goes with us to Italy.  We have consulted one doctor, who did not prescribe medicine for her.  In the morning she reads with my brother.  She seems to forget whatever she reads:  the occupation is everything necessary just now.  Our sharp Monmouth air provokes her to walk briskly when she is out, and the exercise has once or twice given colour to her cheeks.  Yesterday being a day of clear frost, we drove to a point from which we could mount the Buckstone, and here, my brother says, the view appeared to give her something of her lost animation.  It was a look that I had never seen, and it soon went:  but in the evening she asked me whether I prayed before sleeping, and when she retired to her bedroom, I remained there with her for a time.

“You will pardon me for refusing to let her know that you have written to your relative in the Austrian service to obtain a commission for you.  But, on the other hand, I have thought it right to tell her incidentally that you will be married in the Summer of this year.  I can only say that she listened quite calmly.

“I beg that you will not blame yourself so vehemently.  By what you do, her friends may learn to know that you regret the strange effect produced by certain careless words, or conduct:  but I cannot find that self-accusation is ever good at all.  In answer to your question, I may add that she has repeated nothing of what she said when we were together in Devon.

“Our chief desire (for, as we love her, we may be directed by our instinct), in the attempt to restore her, is to make her understand that she is anything but worthless.  She has recently followed my brother’s lead, and spoken of herself, but with a touch of scorn.  This morning, while the clear frosty sky continues, we were to have started for an old castle lying toward Wales; and I think the idea of a castle must have struck her imagination, and forced some internal contrast on her mind.  I am repeating my brother’s suggestion—­she seemed more than usually impressed with an idea that she was of no value to anybody.  She asked why she should go anywhere, and dropped into a chair, begging to be allowed to stay in a darkened room.  My brother has some strange intuition of her state of mind.  She has lost